Non, je ne regrette rien
by tHe dAily ScRibbLeR
Summary: Cobb consumed with guilt, Eames still in grief, Yusuf wanting to forget it all, Ariadne in wonder, and Arthur developing some unknown and unexpected feelings. A little one-shot about how the Fischer mission affected the team.


Disclaimer: If only I owned _Inception_...

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No! No regrets_

_No! I will have no regrets_

_All the things_

_That went wrong_

_For at last I have learned to be strong_

Cobb will never forgive himself for what happened to Mal, what he drove her to do. He was young and naive, anxious to learn more and push the bounds of sharing. He was addicted, but so was she. She was every bit as entranced as he was, he just didn't know how much she loved it. He had no idea that she was so obsessed with it that she would never want to leave, how could he? He used to constantly berate himself, driving himself crazy with the memories of her in his head. He will always remember her dark brown curls, her laugh, those bright sparkling blue eyes. Whenever his mind drifts to her or any of the dozens of other horrible things he's done he has to stop himself and remember that he's back to being a father again. He can't wallow in self-pity, fight with other peoples' subconscious, or work himself to death anymore. He's back with his children and that's all that matters. Even with all the horrible things he's done, he will never regret any actions he took that helped him to see his children again.

_For the grief doesn't last_

_It is gone_

_I've forgotten the past_

The whole reason why Eames got into the forging business was because of his sister. His sister was an extractor, one of the best (second only to Dom and Mal). With her blonde hair, blue eyes, and killer smile she was the perfect candidate to invade peoples' minds (after all, no man would question why a beautiful blonde was in his dreams). She worked alone for the most part, using different chemists and architects with each job that came her way. She was pretty famous in the extraction world and was known for her..._creative _ways of getting men to divulge their secrets. Eames had been a run of the mill forger (mainly passports, IDs, and the occasional birth certificate) until his sister started asking for IDs by the dozens. Like a good brother, he made them for her but required that she show him why she needed them. He was nineteen when he shared his first dream. Twenty when his sister was killed by a company she extracted data from. Twenty-one when he made a habit of drinking so much that he would regularly forget that he even had a sister. Twenty-two when Cobb approached him with a business opportunity. By twenty-three and he had become one of the best forgers in the business.

_And the memories I had_

_I no longer desire_

_Both the good and the bad_

_I have flung in a fire_

Yusuf was raised by two loving parents, growing up with two older brothers and two younger sisters. He was a bright child, the brightest of his siblings. From a young age his "crazy" uncle would tell him stories of kicks, projections, and extractors. Yusuf was in awe of his uncle, always begging for more stories. His brothers and sisters never believed his uncle but, even as he got to be a teenager, he would listen in rapture, taking in all of the wondrous stories. It wasn't until his sister died of Ebola that Yusuf began taking the world of dreams seriously. At sixteen his uncle agreed to mentor him in being a Chemist. He was an amateur, mixing different herbs and liquids together to create sedatives barely strong enough to lull his dog to sleep. As he progressed his uncle would take him into the dreams, to dream and forget. It wasn't often and he only experimented during the night, when the nightmares of his sister came. He continued with the sedatives, making them stronger with each little tweak. He was seventeen when he created a combination strong enough to put one to sleep for an hour. He continued practicing in his basement with his uncle, improving and experimenting till he was practically falling asleep on the job. He tested on any willing participants, eventually letting it manifest to that twelve-person shared dream. When Cobb came to him with the Fischer he finally felt like his hard work had paid off, he could finally help someone with his work.

_And I feel in my heart_

_That the seed has been sown_

_It is something quite new_

_It's like nothing I've known_

Ariadne likes to think that she lived a normal life. She grew up in a small town in Minnesota, an only child of a photographer and an architect. She used to think that being an architect was the pinnacle of existence, the best thing in the world. Well, that was until she was exposed to the world of dream-sharing. Ariadne likens dream-sharing to a drug as powerful as LSD and as addicting as cocaine. In excess, it can cause you to live in constant fear and paranoia until it kills you. However, in just the right doses it can become some of the best moments of your life. As much as she wishes the real world and it's mundane jobs could be enough for her, she knows that she'll never get rid of that nagging feeling that something else is out there. Something so much better. She will always remember that fateful day when Cobb took her into her first shared dream. It was so surreal to her at first, having so much power was overwhelming and entrancing. Then she had to get ambushed by Cobb's subconscious and stabbed by projection-Mal. Once she began working on the Fischer case, she found herself practicing with Arthur a whole lot more. Luckily for her, he didn't have so many skeletons in his closet. His projections were actually relatively polite...well, they weren't shoving and attacking her.

_For the seed that is new_

_It's the love that is growing for you_

Arthur has never been in love. He's _thought _he was in love numerous times, most of which occurred between the ages of twelve and twenty. However, he has never _truly _been in love. That's why he was so surprised when he felt a very unfamiliar tingling in his stomach after meeting the small brunette that Cobb had pronounced the new architect. At first he just thought it was the sushi from the night before. Like the good point-man he was, he ignored the odd sensations and focused on the job. He took note of when they occurred (usually when Ariadne's walked past him, talked to him, looked at him, or her distinctive vanilla perfume made its way over to him). He also noticed that these tingles were quite persistent, ever-increasing now that she had a desk right across from his. In fact, he got so used to the constant tingling that he managed to ignore it completely (occasionally he found himself smiling for no reason...although, he will vehemently deny any such thing if anybody ever saw him). It wasn't until Eames told him that he looked like a "right lovesick bastard" that Arthur placed that odd tingling. Arthur thwacked the back of Eames's head with a newspaper.


End file.
